[Python-Dev] Python Specializing Compiler

[Guido van Rossum]

> I am generating pseudo-code, which is interpreted by a C module. (With
> real assembler code, it would of course be much faster, but it was just
> simpler for the moment.)

This has great promise!  Once you have an interpreter for some kind of
pseudo-code, it's always possible to tweak the interpreter or the
pseudo-code to make it faster.  And you can make another jump to
machine code to make it a lot faster.

There was a project (p2c or python2c) that tried to compile an entire
Python program to C code that was mostly just calling the Python
runtime C API functions.  It also obtained about a factor of 2 in
speed-up, but its problem was (if I recall) that even a small Python
module translated into hundreds of thousands of lines of C -- think
what that would do to locality.

Since you have already obtained the same speedup with your approach, I
think there's great promise.  Count on sending in a paper for the next
Python conference!

> >  How would you compare the
> > sophistication of your type inference system to the one I've outlined
> > above?
> 
> Yours is much more complete, but runs statically. Mine works at run-time.
> As explained in detail in the readme file, my plan is not to make a
> "compiler" in the usual sense. I actually have no type inferences; I just
> collect at run time what types are used at what places, and generate (and
> possibly modify) the generated code according to that information.

Very cool: a Python JIT compiler.

> (More about it later.)

Can't wait!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)